Happy Birthday Claudia

Today is Claudia's birthday, so lets all be extra nice to her (LIAM!)

Here is another nice photo of her taken when we had our zoo visit.

Liam Speaks

Here is a little video I made recently where Liam advises us on what animals say..

I suppose he could also be technically correct regarding ducks, I have seen ducks duck before.

Internet VOIP

Ok, so this is not new tech to most people, but I want to take a moment to sing the praise of internet VOIP.

This is often billed as "making free calls over the internet" which is what you are basically getting, although it is not really the case since you are paying for an intenet connection.

In practice, you need to set up an account with a provider, like Skype, and then you can make calls over your account to other Skype people for free. You can also (for a fee) make calls out to normal phone lines at a very inexpensive rate, around 0.017 cents (US) per minute to domestic and international numbers.

Here are some providers that I think are all very good. I currently use Skype, and if anyone wants to add me in their directory, my username is fraseringermany





To make this even better for me, I just bought the fancy new IPAQ 514 smartphone from work:
Now it is hard for me to sing the praises of the new phone without sounding like a company shill, so you can take my excitement however you please. I have very favorable reviews supporting my enthusiasm though:

Review 1
Review 2
Review 3

I am most excited that I can use this phone as a WiFi phone, and when you combine that with a VOIP client.... free calls both domestic and international, provided of course I am calling someone else using a VOIP service and I am in WiFI range.

Oh, one other thing, if you are running a Windows Mobile device, you need a client software running in the phone to get the VOIP services running. I am recommending FRING, in which you can have a single program running that allows you to call all of your VOIP friends, regardless of the provider; Google, Gizmo, Skype....

Bath Time

I took some amusing photos of Liam in the bath. He loves sitting in there for a loooooong time as long as he has his buckets and a cloth to play with.

We tried giving him a couple of other toys, boats, and Aunt Doris gave him a little fish, but so far the buckets are the enduring favorite.

Last of the zoo pics

So, to finish off the zoo pics, here are some of the exciting animals we saw...

This bear was pretty great, he was one of the more active animals, and was running all over the place, spinning around and Ryan described him as "doing a little dance." I liked this bear too.
Next on the agenda was the Lion. As usual with Lions, this one was just lazing around, not doing much of anything. I think that I have never really seen Lions doing much except lazing around in all my many many zoo trips. I have been to quite a lot of zoos over the years, and the Lions are usually a little on the disappointing side. They tend to be far away and asleep. Not that I expect them to be doing a little song and dance, but I would like to see them a little closer from time to time.
Next up we found something quite exciting, but Liam was more interested in looking at me. I think he was looking for some snack bt this time.
However, the tiger was pretty nice, it was sitting right up close to us so we could take a nice look at it. Tigers are much more interesting than Lions.After all this fun, Liam was worn out and had a nice big sleep all the way home in the car.

More Zoo Please

I know everyone loves to look at animals, so lets carry on with some more zoo pics.

Ryan was doing his best to motivate Liam to keep walking around the zoo...
However, Liam had spotted something that had even more interest that funny uncle Ryan.
Eventually, we got him away from the ducky ride and back on track looking at some animals. next on the rounds was the exciting deer.
Followed by a lazy kangeroo.
OK, I have to get back to the busy world of paper. So many world altering decisions to make and tasks to carry out....

Zoo trip

Since the weather was nice while we were down in Switzerland, we decided to take Liam to the zoo. This would be his second ever zoo trip, but the first one was to the Augsburg zoo when he was only around 6 months old, so he did not really react to the animals back then.

We went to the zoo in a place called Servion, about 40 minutes outside of Geneva.

The first animals on the agenda were monkeys. I am a big fan of monkeys and I was glad to see that they made a good impression on the boy. Before we left the monkey house, he had learned to say Monkey in English and German, and learned that monkeys go "ook ook ook." Now he is often sitting on the couch and will spontaneously yell out "MON-KEY." Just like daddy.
We departed the monkey house and headed off deeper into the zoo. Although it looks like Liam was following Ryan at this point, really we were all chasing after Liam. Every few minutes he would change direction and race off someplace, usually towards the swings, or back to the animals he just looked at.
Next on the tour were little ponies. Liam liked these because he was allowed to pat them. He is funny with animals, he runs right up to them very close, but then is very very slow and cautious when he is reaching out to touch...
Finally a Canadian animal, an arctic wolf. Liam just yelled "BOW WOW" a lot. I think that is enough of the zoo for today, more to follow.

Claudia in Geneva

Here is a nice picture of Claudia in Geneva. She was recently telling me that I take too many pictures of Liam and not enough of everyone else. I don't think she meant that we have too many photos of the super-baby, but that my ratio of non-Liam photos should increase.

Based on this advice, I tried to take some more pictures of the rest of the family folks during our trip. I think that this picture of Claudia turned out quite nice. You can click on it for the HUGE version.

I really enjoy taking pictures and I think this has increased about a million percent since I bought my digital SLR last year. I think when I go do something, I take on average of 100 photos per day, and then trim that down to about 5-10 that I think are worth sharing with people. What I wish now is that I had some spare money to expand my kit a little. I think that I would really like an external flash, so I could take some nicer indoor pictures using indirect light, and of course I would like a longer lens for a variety of things. Something up to 200-300mm would suit me just fine. I am wondering if Nikon makes a digital teleconverter that could be a cheaper alternative in the meantime. A really really wide lens, like a 12 or 10mm would also be great for some landscape shots.

Ryan's Influence

So Ryan seems to want to make sure that Liam likes American football and made sure he had a little Oklahoma Sooners outfit to get started. Liam seemed to like this and as soon as he stopped being scared of the bearded man he was ready for football action.

We all know that he is going to be a hockey player though. Football is for sissies who can't skate. hahaha.

Happy Birthday Liam!

Liam is two years old today! The big boy woke up early so we could give him some presents before he went off to his daycare. Mummy and Daddy gave him a lego Thomas the Tank Engine set, and another box of the baby lego. We also gave him a book, a book full of his favorite things, trains, cars and construction vehicles.

Later today, some of the mummies and little people from Liam's play group will come by and eat snacks and play. I am interested to see the explosion of two year olds when I get home from work...

Here are some pictures from the morning gifts...

Gaming in Genf Day Two

On the second evening in Geneva, we decided to play the old favorite The Settlers of Catan. This is the game that I think started our renewed interest in board games over here. I had certainly not played anything for years before picking this one up. It is a fine game where you are collecting resources like wood, bricks, wheat and sheep and then building roads and towns in order to get points.

The main problem on this game is that I think it is only fun to play with exactly four people. Lucky we met this criteria. The game started off a little slow since we had all not played in a long time and were re-learning the rules and strategies to a certain extent...There is an ongoing joke that every game which gives a bonus for having "The longest street" becomes Claudia's ultimate goal. I think early in our game playing days, she won the longest street bonus a couple of times and now we all shout it at her in almost every game. "WATCH OUT! CLAUDIA IS GETTING THE LONGEST STREET!" Anyhow, she managed to get the longest street first in this particular game...
Then in an amazing turn of events, I built an even longer street and insisted on the immediate handover of the Longest street bonus card. Claudia did not want to give it up, but she had no choice.It was a nice game, but it took us quite a long time to get down to the end and we were all a little pooped. Ultimately, it was The Doris and her dominance of the tree resource that proved to be too much for the rest of us, and she rode her wave of lumber to victory.
As revenge, here is an unflattering picture of her with her rotten trees, notice how sunburned she was on this day. ha ha.

Day One of Board Games in Genf

As always we used our evenings in Geneva to enjoy the opportunity to play some board games. It is so much more fun to do something interactive and social than to all sit on the couch and watch a film. Even though people's competitive streaks can get the better of them, I think that we all have good fun playing some games.

On the first evening, we opted for the crowd favorite Ticket to Ride: Europe which is usually referred to as "The Train Game." This is one where we play the original (American map) version when in Germany since I own that, and then the Europe map when in Geneva since the Joneses got that one.

The game is essentially about building train routes across the map, with a hidden set of "tickets" that give you the goals of connecting certain cities. Longer routes equal more points.

Claudia was able to get some extra help with her cards though...
The outcome of this one was Victory for Ryan. This was notable as it was his first ever win of "The Train Game" and he had been lusting after this victory for a long time. Not sure why success had always eluded him, but he was pretty much always "Mr. 2nd Place" when it came to this game. Finally, the crown is yours Ryan, enjoy the glory.

Tragedy Strikes!

So we are driving down to Geneva to visit Doris and Ryan when we stop for a lunch break just outside Zürich. Liam is a picture of cooperation today, playing nicely, behaving like a good little man and generally not being a pest. He was crazy about some small barking toy dogs at the rest stop, so Claudia bought him one. It was pretty funny how excited he got, he was dancing around with the dog all through lunch.

Anyway, we finish up and head back to the car... Key in the ignition and.... nothing. Car is dead, looks like the battery is flat. So, we call the ADAC (CAA of Germany) and they call the Swiss version and dispatch a car.

We amuse the little man around the rest stop while we wait for the "Yellow angel" to show up. After about 60 min or so the car arrives.
As we suspected, the battery is dead... 15 min and 200 swiss francs later we are back in business and on our way.
Amazingly, Liam was a good boy the whole time, thanks to the wonder dog.

Ahhh Germany,

Here is something you don't see in every country, a blatantly racist name on a restaurant.

Combining the cook character from the beloved TV show Bonanza and the stereotypical speech of a Chinese person speaking English, here is the sign.

In case it is not clear is is "Hobb Sing, Das Pondelosa Lestaulant"

This is just down the road from my office in Boeblingen, and the first time I went past I was stunned by the sign. I know that German's are no nearly so politically correct as the Americans are, or even the British for that matter, but this seemed extreme even for them. It is pretty normal on German TV to see politically incorrect caricatures of homosexuals, asians, blacks and whatever other stereotypes you can think of, I have even seen comedians in blackface. Coming from North America, I tend to notice these things.

Well, at least the Germans have changed the name of the cookie from "Mohrenköpfe" (Negro's head) to "Negerkuss"(Negro kiss) to "Schokokuss"(chocolate kisses) They are really good cookies, a marshmallow on a wafer covered in Chocolate. Racistlicious.